Dark Pretense Paintings

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Certain trees have drooping branches that remind me of feathers on a wing or tail. Usually its a sort of pine with big layered boughs, but this year I moved to a house with a grove of Cottonwoods in the back, and downward hanging and swooping branches covered in brilliant yellow leaves all swaying and clattering together like wind chimes. It seemed to be showing off, like a peacock.

Monday, August 20, 2012

Maine and Massachussets have great shorelines, but they also have great ponds and lakes. While camping on Donell Pond in Maine, a lake by any other state's standards, I saw and heard many loons calling across the water. It is one of the few times I have not minded being woken up at dawn by a bird. The Loons would glide through the golden water in front of our boat, always diving before I got a decent photo.
In Brewster, Massachussets, I stayed at an awesome couple's house near Sheep Lake, although maybe it was Sheep Pond... anyway, they had a Bluebird house with an abandonded egg in it. It made me think about how animals can leave something so precious behind, not dwelling in the past. Must be nice.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Mayapples are some of the strangest plants in the woods. You can walk acres and acres of forest and see flowers and blooms and forgettable leaves, and then you come across a patch of Mayapples. Their alien spaceship leaves and death ray flower seem to have a greater purpose.
Grackles have never seemed the same to me after a summer day spent at my brother's house last year. He had this big picture window looking out onto his yard and must have spent a good deal of time looking at the grackles gathering at his bird feeder. His description of their metallic blue feathers, yellow eyes, and noble personalities has had me thinking twice every time I see them. One of the grackles in this painting is pregnant, which has me wondering if you even can say a bird is pregnant.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

While walking past a patch of blooming purple iris flowers, I noticed how they looked like octopi perched on top of green stems. The deer skull lay nearby, so I stuck it in there. Doesn't seem like much of a stretch of the imagination, but it was fun to paint.

Monday, April 30, 2012

This is the second painting I've done depicting spring as a woman. She is part elm stump, with bark for hair. The red ferns are sprouts of maidenhair ferns. While walking with my neice Fiona, we noticed tiny delicate red spirals covered in whispy fronds poking out of the ground. After nearly 30 years of walking these woods I have never seen this stage of what is my favorite fern. The brown ferns sort of represent turkey feathers because it has been my bad luck recemtly to scare a hen turkey off of her nest while I'm mushroom hunting. Once, I managed to collect the eggs ( female turkeys usually abandon the nest for good if discovered) and have a setting chicken hen hatch the eggs and raise the babies, but that's another painting...

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Thanks to my brother, I find myself thinking of moths more than I used to, and more than I would like to. The more I learn about them, the less I am sure I like them. From the Black Witch moth that is rumored to spell certain death if it flies into your house and manages to travel to all four corners of the room, to the bizarre and downright horrific acts committed upon defenseless cocoons by parasites, not to mention their equally repulsive defense mechanisms. I have always thought of moths as mysterious night creatures, but now instead of looking up at the night sky in wonder, I am anxiously glancing over my shoulder.
As for the trout, your guess is as good as mine...